The Girl You Left Behind

central London.
     All those
Ideal Home
type features do. They don’t want to encourage
     burglars by giving the exact address. But I’m guessing it shouldn’t be too
     hard to trace them – it names the couple after all.’
    Paul shuts the folder. He keeps seeing Mr
     Nowicki’s tight mouth, the way the son had looked at his father as if he’d
     never seen him before. ‘You’re American, yes?’ the old man had said to
     him, as they stood at his office door. ‘You cannot possibly understand.’
    Janey’s hand is resting lightly on his
     arm. ‘How’s the house hunting going?’
    ‘Not great. Everything good seems to
     get snapped up by cash buyers.’
    ‘Well, if you want cheering up, we
     could go and get a bite to eat. I’m not doing anything tonight.’
    Paul raises a smile. He tries not to notice
     the way Janey’s hand moves to her hair, the painfully hopeful slant to her smile.
     He steps away. ‘I’m working late. Got a couple of cases I want to get on top
     of. But thanks. I’ll get on to the new file first thing in the morning.’
    Liv arrives home at five, having cooked her
     father a meal and vacuumed the ground floor of his house. Caroline rarely vacuums, and
     the colours of the faded Persian runners had been noticeably more vivid when she
     finished. Around her, the city seethes on a warm late summer day, the traffic noises
     filtering up, with the smell of diesel rising from the tarmac.
    ‘Hey, Fran,’ she says, as she
     reaches the main door.
    The woman, woollen hat rammed low over her
     head despite the heat, nods a greeting. She is digging around in a plastic bag. She has
     an endless collection of them, tied with twine or stuffed inside each other, which she
     endlessly sorts and rearranges. Today she has moved her two boxes, covered with a blue
     tarpaulin, to the relative shelter of the caretaker’s door. The previous caretaker
     tolerated Fran for years, even using her as an unofficial parcel stop. The new one, she
     says, when Liv brings her down a coffee, keeps threatening to move her. Some residents
     have complained that she is lowering the tone. ‘You had a visitor.’
    ‘What? Oh. What time did she
     go?’ Liv had not left out either a note or a key. She wonders whether she should
     stop by the restaurant later to make sure Mo is okay. Even as she thinks it, she knows
     she won’t. She feels vaguely relieved at the prospect of a silent, empty
     house.
    Fran shrugs.
    ‘You want a drink?’ Liv says, as
     she opens the door.
    ‘Tea would be lovely,’ Fran
     says, adding, ‘Three sugars, please,’ as if Liv has never made her one
     before. And then, with the preoccupied air of someone who has far too much to do to
     stand around talking, she goes back to her bags.
    She smells the smoke even as she opens the
     door. Mo is sitting cross-legged on the floor by the glass coffee-table, one hand around
     a paperback book, the other resting a cigarette against a white saucer.
    ‘Hi,’ she says, not looking
     up.
    Liv stares at her, her key in her hand.
     ‘I – I thought you’d left. Fran said you’d gone.’
    ‘Oh. The lady downstairs? Yeah. I just
     got back.’
    ‘Back from where?’
    ‘My day shift.’
    ‘You work a day shift?’
    ‘At a care home. Hope I didn’t
     disturb you this morning. I tried to leave quietly. I thought the whole desk-drawer
     thing might wake you. Getting up at six kind of kills the whole “welcome
     houseguest” vibe.’
    ‘Desk-drawer thing?’
    ‘You didn’t leave a
     key.’
    Liv frowns. She feels as if she is two steps
     behind in this conversation. Mo puts her book down and speaks slowly. ‘I had to
     have a little dig around till I found the spare key in your desk drawer.’
    ‘You went in my desk
     drawer?’
    ‘It seemed like the most obvious
     place.’ She turns a page. ‘It’s okay. I put it back.’ She adds,
     under her breath, ‘Man, you like stuff tidy.’
    She returns to her book. David’s book,
     Liv sees, checking out the spine. It is a battered Penguin
Introduction to Modern
     Architecture
, one of his favourites. She can still picture him reading it,
     stretched out on the sofa. Seeing it in someone else’s hands makes her stomach
     tighten with anxiety. Liv puts her bag down, and walks through to the kitchen.
    The granite worktops are covered with toast
     crumbs. Two mugs sit on the table, brown rings bisecting their insides. By the toaster,
     a bag of sliced white bread sits collapsed and half